A quality SEO agency that has been around for many years keeps an eye out for what Google is going to plan, test, or rollouts. Every change that Google Search makes changes in how marketers strategize, execute, and create reports. Google is constantly making changes to its searches, such as recently adding COVID-related travel information on hotels and flights. This affects how SEO strategists at an Atlanta SEO agency advise their clients and structure their digital marketing campaigns.
2026 Update: What I Would Change About Everything I Said in 2020
Right, let us be honest. I wrote this post back in 2020 and whilst some of it has aged reasonably well, a lot of it needs a serious rethink. The SEO landscape in 2026 looks almost nothing like what any of us were predicting six years ago, and if you are making decisions based purely on what I wrote back then, I want to stop you right there and give you a proper update first.
The biggest shift I have seen is how Google now treats AI-generated and AI-assisted content. Back in 2020 we were still talking about word counts and keyword density as if they were the whole story. Today, Google’s ranking systems are far more focused on what I would call “signal depth” – things like genuine author expertise, consistent topical authority across your entire site, and real user engagement signals. Tools like Surfer SEO and Clearscope are still useful for on-page work, but they are table stakes now, not competitive advantages. Where I am seeing real gains for my clients in 2026 is in building content clusters that demonstrate sustained, credible expertise rather than targeting isolated keywords.
Voice and conversational search, which I mentioned in 2020 as something to “watch,” has settled into a fairly predictable pattern. It matters most for local search and quick-answer queries. If you are a local business, optimising for conversational, question-based phrases is genuinely worth your time. For everyone else, focus your energy on structured data and ensuring your content answers questions clearly and concisely, because AI Overviews in search results are now a daily reality that affects click-through rates in ways we simply could not have anticipated.
Technical SEO has also become considerably more important than it was given credit for in 2020. Core Web Vitals are no longer new or optional. Page experience signals are baked into how sites are assessed, and I have seen perfectly good content fail to rank simply because the site was slow or unstable on mobile. If you have not done a proper technical audit recently, that is where I would start before touching anything else.
One thing I got right in 2020 was emphasising quality over quantity. That principle has only become more true. But in 2026, quality also means demonstrating real-world experience and credibility, not just writing well. Google’s E-E-A-T framework rewards content that shows you have actually done the thing you are writing about. Keep that front of mind as you work through the rest of this post.
Artificial Intelligence To Improve SEO
The 2019 launch of Google’s new Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding (BERT) algorithm created quite a buzz among SEO professionals.
This algorithm has a network base for processing natural language. Basically, it looks at how a website is crawled, indexed, and searched, and how language is used to get more relevant results. This is based on machine-learning technology that has been around since 2015 called RankBrain. Using the data input from the billions of searches conducted each day, the computers are able to teach themselves how to determine which relevant results to pull up in search engine queries. It was intended to better understand search engine queries and to match users with websites that have high-quality content that has been visited many times for the same search. With more searches being conducted, computers are able to learn faster and match users with better results.
Voice Search Engine Optimization (VSEO) Will Become The Preferred Method Of Searching
Voice search allows users to conduct a search query by speaking into a device that generates results. Speech recognition technology has become much more precise in the last few years. Devices are able to respond to voice queries and deliver the search results verbally back. Voice searching is a trend that has been on the rise since 2018, and in 2020 it is only expected to be used more often.
Entity Engagement
There are three factors that affect your local search results: relevance, distance, and prominence. Relevance refers to how your business matches what the user typed in so that someone who is looking for Asian food doesn’t get search results for Asian art instead. Distance refers to how far you are from a business based on your location. Lastly, prominence is about how popular your business is. This last factor Is also affected by your social media and what people say about you online.
Engagement is going to be one of the most important factors for local SEO in 2020. Studies show that 46% of Google searches have local intent, and forecast that number to rise to 50% in 2020. This makes it tougher for local businesses to be seen in local markets. If your brand is mentioned on social media, and videos or articles, then that can increase your engagement with your local community. If your brand receives a lot of positive reviews on Google My Business, if your business location is searched for a lot in Google Maps or if a lot of Android users have saved your business as a contact in their phone, then those signal to web crawlers that your business entity has high prominent, and thus has high entity engagement.
Data Will Drive SEO
Tracking user behavior and keyword optimization are important parts of monitoring your SEO strategy. Visualizing and data science will come to the forefront of digital marketing in 2020. Some factors you can assess for include web page loading speeds, indexing, balance rates, and response errors.
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The mistakes I see businesses making with SEO in 2020 (and how to fix them)
Look, I’ve audited hundreds of websites and I keep seeing the same pattern. Companies spend money on SEO but they’re optimizing for the wrong things. In 2020, the gap between what works and what doesn’t has widened dramatically.
The biggest mistake? Treating keyword research like it’s still 2015. I watch businesses stuff pages with exact-match keywords, build content around search volume alone, and ignore user intent completely. Google’s algorithm has evolved. It now understands semantic meaning, context, and what a user needs when they type a query. A client of mine in the fitness space was ranking for “best weight loss pills” but getting zero conversions. We rewrote their content to target “how to lose 10 pounds in 3 months naturally” instead. Same keyword difficulty, but the audience was buying. Conversions went up 240% in 90 days.
Second problem: mobile optimization that’s cosmetic, not functional. Everyone talks about mobile-first indexing, but I see sites that “technically” work on phones but are slow, have massive images, and use pop-ups that cover half the screen. Google doesn’t care that your site looks okay on mobile. It cares about Core Web Vitals. Page speed matters. Cumulative Layout Shift matters. In 2020, I started measuring these metrics for every client and they became our primary focus, not rankings. Sites that improved these metrics saw traffic lift, even if their keyword rankings didn’t move.
Third mistake: ignoring the rise of featured snippets and position zero. I see businesses competing for position 1 while ignoring that position 0 (the snippet shown at the top of search results) captures 8-10% of clicks. If your competitor owns that snippet, they’re getting traffic you’re not. We started building content specifically designed to answer the “who, what, when, where, why” questions that generate snippets. One client went from “not visible in featured snippets” to owning 14 snippets in 60 days. That moved the needle.
Here’s what’s changed. In 2020, SEO became about experience signals, not just content signals. Google rolled out updates that punished sites with poor UX. I stopped recommending tactics like aggressive internal linking and started recommending things like clear information architecture, readable fonts, and reducing page clutter. One manufacturing client had a site that ranked well but had an impossible navigation structure. We simplified it, and traffic increased 35% without any new content.
The most effective tactic I’ve implemented this year? E-E-A-T. Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust. Google wants to know you know what you’re talking about. For clients in YMYL (Your Money Your Life) categories, this became non-negotiable. We added author bios, published case studies, built review sections, and showed our credentials. This wasn’t sexy SEO. But it worked.
More questions
Should I focus on rankings or traffic in 2020?
Focus on traffic and conversions. Rankings are a vanity metric. I’ve seen clients with 100 first-page rankings and zero revenue. Position 5 for a high-intent keyword beats position 1 for a keyword that doesn’t convert. Track click-through rate, landing page performance, and what happens after users arrive. That’s your real metric.
How often should I update old content for 2020 SEO?
Monthly minimum if it’s ranking content. Pull your analytics and find pages that rank between positions 2-10. Rewrite them to be better than position 1. Update dates, add new data, improve formatting. Don’t wait for traffic to drop before you act. Refresh while you’re still winning.
Is backlink building still important in 2020?
Yes, but differently. Stop hunting for directory links and PBN networks. Focus on earning links by creating content that journalists, industry leaders, and other websites want to link to. I’ve seen better results from 3 high-quality, relevant backlinks than 50 mediocre ones. Quality beats quantity now, and it always has.
